Praise for an/other pastoral

Vivid, engaging and highly inventive, […] an extraordinarily assured and deeply moving new collection that will stand as one of the very finest new books of poetry for years to come. —John Burnside

This collection is a powerful expression of a diasporic African ecopoetics. With an intense vision and unique voice, Tjawangwa Dema poignantly addresses themes of racial, environmental, food, animal, and climate justice. —Craig Santos Perez

an/other pastoral is a tapestry of heartfelt musings that move across histories and cultures, questioning their impact and purpose. Dema decodes the world around us – here we are, between what the borders mean by country, and what the nightingale and eel mean by wind, by water. This book is full of revelations. —Nick Makoha

Praise for The Careless Seamstress

“These poems open the archive of identity and the mysteries of the body at one and the same time. In richly embossed detail, events, lost evenings and the erotics of history are unveiled. In these narratives, a young woman’s life moves between danger and custom: her body knows silence is a language/ any woman can learn to speak. This work brings the reader to new places and age-old insights. These are moving, eloquent and compelling poems.” —Eavan Boland, Melvin and Bill Lane Professor at Stanford University and author of A Woman Without a Country

“Tjawangwa Dema’s poems are as bold, roving, and insistent as they are delicate and incisive. The Careless Seamstress is a ravishing debut.” —Tracy K. Smith, 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate and Chair, Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University

“Dema’s similes and metaphors do not announce themselves. Instead, they arrive with the command that comes when language seems inevitable—necessary. This is a quality of maturity and generosity in the poet whose commitment is to contain ideas and feelings in language that clarifies and complicates — a kind of quest for truth.” —Kwame Dawes, Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and author of City of Bones

“Tjawangwa Dema uses her work to explore large questions of gender, identity and labor. The pieces in The Careless Seamstress live at the intersection of these themes, showing how one moment or action brilliantly encapsulates the whole.” –Noah Cruickshank, Shelf Awareness

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